May 27, 2008

They'd stop to chat with Scanner Dan, the grizzled guy with a walkie-talkie buzzing at his hip as he asked for change. They'd offer odd jobs to a man known as Snowball, who was rumored to have been a smuggler for the Chicago mob during Prohibition.

Then two violent slayings in less than three months shook residents in the state capital, which is also home to the main campus of the University of Wisconsin.

Both victims were stabbed in their homes in the middle of the day by strangers, police said.

Though investigators have no suspects, the police focused on the city's homeless and transients, among others. Now a backlash against Madison's down-and-out population is brewing.

Actually, as LAPD has found, homeless havens attract criminals: paroled rapists, drug addicts and drug dealers and assorted other criminals, because that's where the action is and they can count on "advocates" to supply an environment conducive to their lifestyle. Many homeless in LA also actually do have homes but frequent Skid Row because criminals like to be in areas where crime is tolerated.

""There was a time when residents in this liberal college city would greet homeless people by name.""

Well it would be nice if there was a time when slipping a dollar in their McDonald's cup would be replaced by some kind of actual help that got them off the street and become self reliant.

I think there is something seriously wrong in a country where people beg for money on the street yet we have to import millions of illegals to do work the beggers evidently can't lower themselves to do.

Thank you, Pat, for the early morning chuckle. All those people on skid row actually have mansions in Beverly Hills. You can tell by 90210 zip code tattooed on their left shoulder. Btw, the median price for a home in L.A. is over 1/2 a million dollars.

Not only a mixed metaphor, a regretably passive sentence. And what is this "backlash" anyway? To quote from the article, we have "a lot more door-locking going on when people are home" and "bars and restaurants [...] starting to walk their staff home at night."

This isn't a backlash, it's sensible behaviour. When the liberal denizens of Madison vote in Judge Roy Bean as sheriff to clear out the riff-raff, then we can talk backlash.

Victims are necessary to the existence of modern liberal-progressives. Thudpucker's Law says that liberals are precluded from doing anything actually effective to help victims because the consequences would be too threatening.

Muffdiver's Corollary explains that liberals therefore must say and believe they are doing effective compassionate things, even though they are not, so they can live with Thudpucker's Law.

I used to remember a guy like that out here in the East County of San Diego, in a city called El Cajon. His name was Radio Joe. Sweet guy who used to walk around with a radio on his shoulder and all he wanted was D-Size cells to power it. Never asked for anything beyond that. I have no idea what happened to him.

The key to them being tolerated (or even lionized) was their relative scarcity.

When they started proliferating and becoming abusive, then people sorta stopped being amused by them.

I'm having trouble figuring out why that's such a hard thing to understand.

It seems that college towns like their homeless to give them some sort of "gritty appeal". Plus dropping money in their cups is a so much more immediately gratifying experience than mailing checks to "Doctors without Borders".

The era of romanticizing bums started in the 60s. For a time, certain cities trumpeted how "homeless friendly" they were. And, in Reagan's time, Hollywood celebrities took up their cause.

Slowly, the trend reversed as cities and people realized much of the homeless population was criminal, or voluntary parasites that didn't want to work but to remain in their drug and alcohol use.

Celebs stopped inviting The Homeless to Malibu. San Fran began rousting them off the streets. Rudy cracked down on the "Squeegee People" and evicted them from public places. College towns started to realize aggressive panhandling - and the cussing guy smelling of years-old piss dozing one off in the library wasn't a benefit to students or residents.

A lot of homeless are not transient. They are permanent fixtures. There is one guy, gal and their dog that are everlastingly positioned on a strategic corner with a sign that they need money, ran out of gas. They have been out of gas for several years now.

People like their homeless as long as they are seemingly benign. Once they become aggressive or they percieve them to be a threat then the welcome mat gets rolled back. No one should be surprised when a locality, which is friendly or welcoming to the homeless, would see a rise in its homeless population over time.

No one, to my knowledge, really knows how many homeless there are. But we have certainly consstructed their "narratives." There is the "homeless vet"--at least thats the sign these bums scribble on their begging poster, and, of course, the bleeding hearts project their version of events on these neer-do-well "victim" of "the man." Thus, are they fit into someone's larger narrative. Then there are the people who genuinely need help and who might have been institutionalized. To their misfortune, our penchant for doing nice does us in: we let people who need to be institutionalized, or at least placed in a more supervised settings, run loose--it was, of course, for their own good. And then we have those who are "homeless" and make a living panhandling. these folks have residences, are not addicts, and simply find it easier to make a living pan-handling. All three types were documented on that bastion of conservatism, NPR several years back. So when speaking of "the homeless" let's be sure just who we are talking about.

1. Re fear of walking home at night: The 2 murders happened to people who were at home and during the day.

2. It seems wrong to call panhandlers and street people homeless. They might have a place to stay. They make $10 an hour when they panhandle in "Peace Park" here I just read the other day. And some people with jobs don't have homes. There are different problems that shouldn't be confused.

I'm all for helping people improve their lives," said Mohs, 71, a retired real estate lawyer who has owned property downtown for 50 years. "But that's not what we're dealing with here. It's aggressive panhandling, aggressive touching, scary behavior from people on drugs or mentally ill."

Well said.But homeless activists will surely defend their right to engage in aggressive panhandling, aggressive touching, and scary behaviors.

LA TImes story summary:Homelessness is all fun and games until someone's daughter gets killed.

"They make $10 an hour when they panhandle in "Peace Park" here I just read the other day"

And of course they are declaring their income and paying taxes on it. ;-)

Seriously. This makes me mad when I have to pay my quarterly taxes and pony up for my health insurance. You know all these so called 'homeless' are collecting tax free benefits (Medicaide, SSI, Welfare, food stamps etc) If you add it all up they are probably making more money... NET...than many blue collar workers who pay house payments, car insurance, house insurance, buy groceries and all the other fees, fines and taxes that come with being a legal worker.

I used to have a group of these guys that hung out in the alley behind my office. If I was sitting on the toilet I could listen to their conversations through the window. Lemme tell ya it was very educational. They would trade information on what sort of sob stories were working in the panhandling trade these days.

Funny ther LA Times didn't point to their own efforts to undo the damage of homelss advocates: The Reclamation of Skid Row" by Heather Mac Donald

"Before Smith’s Safer City Initiative began in September 2006, Skid Row’s 50 blocks had reached a level of depravity that stunned even longtime observers. Encampments composed of tents and cardboard boxes covered practically every inch of sidewalk. Their 1,500 or so occupants, stretched out in lawn chairs or sprawled on the pavement, injected heroin and smoked crack and marijuana in plain view, day and night. Feces, urine, and drug-resistant bacteria coated the ground. Even drug addicts were amazed at the scene.

The human chaos hid entrenched criminal networks.

A pitiless law of the jungle ruled social relations.

Nonviolent crime also metastasized on Skid Row, fed by government welfare.

This lawlessness hurt Skid Row’s law-abiding residents the most.

By now, public and private entities have spent $350 million on homeless housing downtown without quieting the activists.

Four mornings a week, Safer City squads blanket Skid Row’s most intractable blocks. Much of their effort targets quality-of-life issues—discouraging public drinking and littering, stopping sales of counterfeit merchandise, nabbing illegal dumpers. “The key to SCI is perception,” Smith says. “Do people feel comfortable coming down here? We talk to the homeless and ask them what still needs to be done.”

I am assuming (though in point of fact I don't know) that carrying a hand gun is illegal in Madison. Hence, my suggestion to our "former mayor" that he reconsider the virtues of the 2nd Amendment if he's concerned about his daughter.

That's reassuring since there are so many documented cases of assaults being initiated with the victim being blinded by pepper spray.

I went to school at Indiana University Northwest which is located in that bastion of crime known as Gary Indiana. Believe me, more than a few students including yours truly exercised our 2nd Amendment rights when going to class particularly if it was a night class.

And it was a commuter college which meant night classes were par for the course as most of us had jobs and not a trust fund to get us through.

Plus, what if you had a midget bodyguard. A real mean midget bodyguard. You shouldn't be a sizeist. Some of those little dudes are real tough. They can bite you in the ankle and hang on like a bulldog.

Fortunately, the Wisconsin Assembly barely mustered the votes necessary to sustain Governor Doyle's Veto of the Conceal and Carry bill. From The Capital Times:

Assembly Fails to Override Gov's Veto on Concealed Weapons BillBy Anita WeierThe state Assembly failed today to override Gov. Jim Doyle's veto of bill that would have allowed Wisconsin residents to carry a concealed weapon with a permit in most cases.

The vote was 64-34, two short of the two-thirds majority required. The Senate approved the override Thursday on 23-10 vote.

Two Democrats who had voted for the bill when it originally passed changed their votes. They were Rep. John Steinbrink of Pleasant Prairie and Rep. Terry Van Akkeren of Sheboygan.

Steinbrink issued a written statement saying he had heard from a large number of constituents on both sides of the issue.

From a city where we average about 3 homicides a year for the last twenty years, a big thank you to the Assembly Democrats who voted "no," especially to the two who switched after hearing from their constituents, the Senators who voted "no," and the tireless effort on the part of the Governor and his staff (Go Shawn!) who worked to sustain the veto.

Another special thank you is in order to all of the professional law enforcement officials, hunters and gun owners who joined with health care workers and professionals raising their voices with pleas for sanity.

I wonder if the Supremacy Clause means letter carriers in Wisconsin can still carry dog spray to deter attackers. A cousin of mine was attacked by a dog and laid up for several weeks. He quit that job because of it.

I am not sure that most people connect the murders and their feelings about the homeless in Madison. This is not Berkley. I think most folks tolerate the homeless and are occasionally annoyed by them but the cozy relationship has been gone for years for most folks.

I know that police have arrested and questioned many homeless because of the murders but I think that the citizens would not have cared if this occurred without any murders.

This type of article may actually add fuel this connection and make more people think that the homeless may have actually be murderers and criminals. I am sure that many parents of UW students will see the article. Thanks LA Times.

Is there crime here? yes. Should a person, especially a female, walk home at night alone downtown. Not here and not in any city. Maybe the crimes have reminded people of that. This has little to do with our homeless population.

Your neighborhood Cabela's will happily sell you either of these handy defense items.

Jogger Fogger - $14.99.This pepper spray self-defense device fits comfortably in your hand with a stretch band to hold it in place while you run. It can also be worn on a belt and carried by mail carriers, delivery personnel, meter readers, bicyclists or anyone out for a stroll. It's one of the most versatile self-defense units on the market. Fog spray pattern. 1.9 oz.

I think there is something seriously wrong in a country where people beg for money on the street yet we have to import millions of illegals to do work the beggers evidently can't lower themselves to do.

Nobody panhandles because they actually need money for food or shelter. Every panhandler you see is either crazy, on drugs, or a con artist. Or some combination of those three things, of course.

If you're talking about Wis. Stat. § 941.26(4)(L), it is illegal for a convicted felon to possess "any device or container that contains a combination of oleoresin of capsicum and inert ingredients but does not contain any other gas or substance that will cause bodily discomfort." I don't see anywhere in the Wisconsin Statutes that makes it illegal for anyone else to carry it. As far as USE, it is illegal to use other than in self-defense.

Nobody panhandles because they actually need money for food or shelter. Every panhandler you see is either crazy, on drugs, or a con artist. Or some combination of those three things, of course.

None of which are traits I want in an employee.

I agree. Its just that you tell the Save the Homeless crowd that kind of stuff and you get spit on. The liberal mindset is that no one would willingly live on the street if they didn't have to whereas I say they don't if they got a job which means they prefer panhandling over working.

no one here has yet mentioned young panhandlers -- which is what we mostly see here in portland, oregon. downtown streetcorners where you can get a lot of money (like outside either broadway entrance to nordstrom's) are controlled by the streetgangs (known as "families") who may look like they're runaways in blue mohawks but are often in their mid-20s and run by an ex-con in his 30s.

if you just show up in town and panhandle on the wrong corner you'll get your ass seriously kicked. and prison-style discipline against anyone who talks to the police is strictly enforced.

the homeless advocates are a powerful lobby. if you live "on the street" in portland you can eat meals at 3 or 4 places downtown, free, no questions asked, prepared by excellent chefs.

most sleep in squats run by the families, occasionally in a shelter if the weather is particularly or there's too much "drama" going on in the squat.

the internet offers guides to the best places in most cities for free food, best accomodations, best dope.

if you drop out of college and begin living in a squat are you homeless?

in portland, incidentally, crimes such as gay-bashing (the gangs look for "fags" as easy targets at night) or muggings near ATMs rarely get in the newspaper. ask why.

the "kids" in mohawks add to the "colorful" atmosphere downtown in pioneer square. by the way, male or female, you have to earn your mohawk by beating someone up.

such shelters as outside/in offer free acupuncture std treatment and massage. every single "youth" down here seeks to outdo the other in their tale of sexual abuse. every single one claims he or she was raped and beaten as a child. are any of these stories true?

the older street people are disliked by and often subject to pile-on violence by the street-kid gangs.

Good evening fellow republicans and lovers of the Bush Doctrine and haters of everything democrat, liberal, academic, environmental and anything else not republican.

My mother told me about those two girls in Madison. Very sad and very odd.

Let's talk about happy things. Like me.

How was your weekend fellow patriots?

Mine was fun, fabulous, fierce and amazing.

I was on Fire Island over the weekend and the competition is going to be challenging and at times depressing. The girls have put the hours in at the gym and they are ready to work the runway.They are in full plumage (is that the word when the peacock spreads its wings)?

I went to a fabulous cookout at someone's fabulous home with a fabulous pool and fabulous food where there were some amazing dishes being passed and I am not talking about the macaroni salad. Oh stop me I am on fire. Pleeeease someone call the police.

I saw Calvin Klein-she is looking old.

Friday I read Good and Evil.Saturday I did a really hot guy originally from Guatemala. Sunday I went to a cookout and all day I was at the beach. Monday was another beach day and a lovely dinner at one of the only restaurants on the island. The rare clumbers were a huge hit of course. I have got my work cut out for me this summer. I see the competition is going to be cut throat and bringing their best game to the arena. I feel somewhat confident but have a tinge of uncertainty and insecurity. My world is so difficult at times. We can't just go to any cook out and where some lousy outfit and have a bad body. We have to be on. Clothes and body have to be impeccable.

She's cute and all but she doesn't know how to give a good blowjob. I was like let's find someone else who can blow us together while we makeout. She was reluctant at first because she wanted to be "alone together" but eventually she gave in and we did locate a good cocksucker. Generally and thankfully, on Fire Island you don't need to look far to find a competent cocksucker.

Pogo,That City Journal article tells the truth. I am downtown pretty often, and it's bad. These are not homeless people; these are people that look like zombies from 28 Days Later. The advocates are fighting the newer residents, too, because the (mostly liberal) artists and yuppies down there realize their lives are in danger from these guys.

Yes, there are many handicapped people and poor people down there in HUD housing who are victimized too, all because of advocates whose ideas were discredited decades ago.

Palady Malady's drag personae is one of anguish, pain and regret. I am picturing her come out, center stage right, with a steak on her head, perhaps a caste or some contraption where she has something wrapped around her head with a large thermomater sticking out of her ass. Her dress is something from the set of Gone With the Wind.

Her performance consists of her complaining and bitching about everyone and everything.

I lived just on the other side of the river from downtown Portland, down the street from a church that operated a soup kitchen. Some of these comments are helping me understand why there were SO many older homeless people hanging out in my 'hood when all the younger kids were downtown.

I always thought of the older guys as security. Who's going to break into a house or a car when there are always a good couple of witnesses around? My Dad thought I was a nut and was convinced they would break into my house or car, but they never did. They did, however, whip up every box of recyclables I ever set out on the sidewalk. Like, immediately. It was a symbiotic relationship.

From Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, to chronicler of one East Village street's gentrification. Gotta love it.

Anyway, one of the main characters was a beautiful homeless guy, who tragically lost his entire family to murder, and lost his mental bearings (but not in the flailing, schizo kind despite being drunk a lot).

He was such a sweet lost soul, and I used to know a lot of guys like that, in Brazil.

At the end of the doc, it says he is presumed dead as the cops cleared the street in the Giuliani era.

I love the idea of "Scanner Dan"s. They are the closest things to the tradition of village idiots left in this crazy asphalt jungle world.

Giving your homeless folks pet names is like treating them as ... pets. I read the piece with this sick feeling in my gut. The homeless people, I'm thinking, were being PLAYED with. For fun. For entertainment. And to think that people who ignore the homeless are the ones who get the bad name. Heh.

Yes, but we also have the hope that someday the common-law right of self-defense will be recognized in Wisconsin, just like it is in most of the rest of the United States.

Original Mike,

It's ostensibly legal to openly carry a handgun in Madison.

The Wisconsin Constitution Article I, Section 25 states: "The people have the right to keep and bear arms for security, defense, hunting, recreation or any other lawful purpose." The WI Supreme Court has ruled that there must be a way for ordinary citizens to exercise this right, so if concealed carry is prohibited then open carry must be permissible. Doesn't mean that various cities and police departments aren't doing their best to evade this ruling, of course.

Isn't acknowledging someone's humanity enough? Must you impose your view of how he should live on him?

And here I thought the notion that the homeless were just people with "a different view of how to live" went out in the 70s.

Letting a (for example) schizophrenic drunk sleep who self-medicates with alcohol, pot and cocaine sleep on the sidewalk doesn't suddenly become "acknowledging their humanity" or "not imposing your views" just because you learn the guy's name. I can understand people who keep their emotional distance from the homeless, because it is painful to get involved in what is often an unsolvable problem (you can't be crazy AND a drunk AND free to do as you please AND safe and healthy). But people who are like "oh, hi there Barry the Funny Crazy Homeless guy, how's life in the panhandling biz?" are just creepy too me, because they have (or pretend to have) an emotional connection without showing any of the human concern I would expect a person with a GENUINE emotional connection to have.

I can understand people who keep their emotional distance from the homeless,

I don't. The choice is not between avoiding eye contact and inviting a homeless guy home to live with you. The homeless guy is unlikely to be one Big Mac or hot shower away from reentering society. Most homeless guys have burned every bridge, used up every friendship, dragged down every family member. Pick one (at most two) worthy cause and support it.